1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and, in particular, to a method and system for processing JavaServer pages. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method, apparatus, and computer instructions for a configurable JavaServer pages processing framework to process JavaServer pages.
2. Description of Related Art
With increasing use of the Internet, customer demands on information provided by Web pages have become more dynamic. Web developers are not only required to generate presentation of Web pages, but also business logic required to generate dynamic contents, such as, for example, a name and an email address of a user from a server. The demand for a flexible method to build dynamic Web pages contributes to the development of JavaServer pages, a technology available from Sun Microsystems, Inc.
JavaServer pages (JSP) provide Web developers an open, freely available specification that provides the advantages, such as, platform-independence, use of the Java programming language, and compatibility with a variety of technologies, such as Web servers, Web browsers, and application servers. A JSP page is a Web page with containing a markup language and additional Java code. Examples of markup languages are hypertext markup language (HTML), extensible markup language (XML) and wireless markup language (WML). The Java code is embedded within tags. When the JSP page is called, this page is compiled by the JSP engine into a Java servlet, which is handled by a servlet engine. The servlet engine loads the servlet class using a class loader and executes the class to create dynamic HTML to be sent to the browser. The next time the same JSP page is called, the JSP engine executes the already-loaded servlet.
JSP allows Web developers to separate user interface from content generation through the use of tags. Tags may be in the form of extensible markup language (XML), which encapsulates the logic that generates the content of the page. These tags allow reusable components to be encapsulated, to make building of Web pages easier.
However, due to increasing complexity of the JSP source file and evolving JSP specification, the use of JSP technology described above has become more costly. The maintenance cost of JSP processors, such as a JSP engine inside an Application server or an integrated development environment (IDE) that authors and tests JSP pages, has also increased. In addition, all JSP pages are required to be validated syntactically for correctness before further processing can be done. With different JSP processors, different requirements are present. For example, an IDE tool may need to present a graphical view of JSP page for editing and a JSP engine may need to generate a Java source file from the JSP page.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method, apparatus, and computer instructions for a configurable JSP processing framework that supports new and different requirements for JSP processing, has detailed knowledge of the JSP specification, performs syntax validation, and customarily executes JSP processing tasks.